Chandrakirti

Works

• c. 620Introduction to the Middle Way (Madhyamakavatara)

  The bodhisattva path in ten stages, with a long critique of Yogacara “mind-only” in the sixth.

• c. 630Clear Words (Prasannapada)

  Commentary on Nagarjuna’s Verses: against independent proofs and against Dignaga’s theory of the means of knowledge.

Position

Chandrakirti wrote commentaries on Nagarjuna’s Verses on the Middle Way and on Aryadeva’s Four Hundred Verses, and an independent Introduction to the Middle Way with his own commentary. In a dispute that later Tibetan scholars made the basis of their classification of schools, he defended the earlier commentator Buddhapalita against Bhaviveka. Bhaviveka had held that a Madhyamika should prove emptiness with independent syllogisms. Chandrakirti replied that such proofs presuppose that the terms refer to things with their own nature, which is exactly what is in question; the Madhyamika should rather show by reductio (prasanga) that the opponent’s own premises lead to absurd consequences. Tibetans therefore called his line “Prasangika”. For Chandrakirti even conventional truth, the world of ordinary transactions, is not made of things with intrinsic nature; it is simply what the world accepts, and philosophy should not try to improve on it. On this ground he rejected Dignaga’s theory of the means of valid knowledge as a foundation, and in the sixth chapter of the Introduction he criticised Yogacara’s claim that only consciousness is real: mind is as empty as its objects. His analysis of the self through the image of a chariot, which is neither identical with its parts nor different from them, became a standard argument. Atisha named him as the one who had understood Nagarjuna, and Tsongkhapa built the Gelug reading of emptiness on him.

Life & context

Little is known of Chandrakirti’s life; scholars place him in the first half of the 7th century CE. Tibetan historians, writing centuries later, say that he was born in South India, became a monk and taught at the great monastery of Nalanda in Bihar, where he is said to have debated the Yogacara layman Chandragomin, and that he performed miracles such as milking a painted cow. His works were not translated into Chinese and had little influence in India for several centuries. From the late 11th century they were studied in Kashmir and translated into Tibetan, above all by Patsab Nyima Drak, and in Tibet he became the leading authority on Madhyamaka.

Further main works

• Commentary on Aryadeva’s Four Hundred Verses (Catuhshatakatika)
• Commentary on Nagarjuna’s Sixty Verses on Reasoning (Yuktishashtikavritti)